


To eat ortolans

by rhosyndu



Category: British Actor RPF, Good Omens (TV) RPF
Genre: Blow Jobs, M/M, Masturbation, Mention of Underage Sex, Mild Gay Panic, Mutual Masturbation, animal cruelty in a quote but none in the fic, infidelity if that bothers you, of course it's cruel it's french cuisine, reminisces of teenage sexual exploits, the fic contains no french cuisine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 08:37:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhosyndu/pseuds/rhosyndu
Summary: Michael and David are in New York for a week, working the PR circuit before Good Omens drops. They get to talking over a few beers, and a little honesty goes a long way.





	To eat ortolans

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to wreathed for the delightful, insightful beta.

_"The blinded birds are kept in cages, gorged on grain and figs, drowned in Armagnac, then plucked and roasted whole. Finally, it is placed entire into the mouth, its beak protruding, and the diner eats everything, including the head and bones."_

\--

"So you've never _tried_ it?"

"No! I- no," David gestures with the hand that holds his beer, and the beer sloshes and foams inside the bottle. "It's a thing, that people do _do_, but it's not something that I do - did- did do, and then I got married and that was the end of it."

They're both hiding in a corner of the hotel bar, tired and worn - and only slightly drunk - from another day of maddening publicity junket work and a couple of beers each; the flight back to Britain feels a million years away instead of a handful of days. David lies to himself that he’ll never complain about publicity work in London ever again.

Michael leans back in the uncomfortably fashionable chair that's a companion to the uncomfortably fashionable sofa that David's thrown himself onto. "I think I was fourteen, the first time."

"Really?" David tries and fails to keep the squeak of interest out of his voice. "That's a bit young."

"Oh, it was the eighties," Michael says, by way of an explanation.

"Still-" says David, but Michael cuts him off with a head shake and a gesture.

"Don't think of it like a parent, like now."

"Bit tricky to stop, these days."

"True," Michael’s vowels run a little long as he speaks, and he drags a fingernail down his sweating beer bottle, "but you must remember how it felt, back then?"

"You mean," David says slowly, "do I remember how it used to be; four channels and liver for dinner? Cycling over to a pal's house to find they'd gone to another pal's house, and then spending half of your Saturday cycling around town, just looking for them?"

"I was thinking more: how you were so certain, and so _alive_, and thought you were _so_ grown up - you know, a right pillock."

David wheezes a laugh. "Oh, him. I remember being him. Trying to shave despite not needing to, going to school the next day, giving on that I hadn't tried despite all the tiny cuts all over my face that proved me a liar."

"Yeah. Never enough to do - or enough of the things that you wanted to do - and the girls you liked were always interested in the older boys. Like gorgeous Gareth in the upper sixth." Michael’s accent thickens as he talks. "They only started looking at me, what, after O-levels? But, you know, you're fourteen and you're working out what feels nice and," Michael laughs, small and wry, "it doesn't count if you and your mate are looking the other way while you wank each other off in a dark bedroom."

David doesn't know what to say to that, what to say to the way Michael's eyes glitter before he frowns and ducks his head, so makes an expansive one armed-shrug, one that he hopes says it's all fine by him. His mouth feels dry, despite the beer. He intends to say something supportive and kind, but instead: "You've- since then, I mean-"

Michael looks at him sidelong. "Well, yes. You fumble your sexuality out eventually. Am I this? Or maybe that-?" Michael holds out one hand and then the other, pantomiming dealing cards. "The labels don't really matter except to other people."

David picks at the label of his beer where condensation is making it curl back from the bottle. "It wasn't easy for anyone, back then," he manages.

"No," says Michael. "One lad took to wearing nail varnish in sixth form college and that'd've been fine somewhere like London. But not in Port Talbot." He adds, slowly: "You become very aware, when someone's getting grief for something like that, of how easily it could be happening to you."

David _yeah_s softly in agreement. "There but for the grace of being decent at football."

"Ha! Yeah. But by then I was off to RADA and London and able to work it all out by myself, so I can't really complain."

Can't complain, mustn't grumble, count your blessings. David always hears those phrases in his Mum's voice. Ways of telling yourself that less than okay was okay. He thinks, not for the first time, how similar his and Michael’s childhoods must have been: the acting-obsessed lads desperate to escape their grey, grey home towns and find something better. "I think you're still allowed to," he says kindly. At least he hopes it sounds kindly.

Michael shakes his head, and swallows a mouthful of beer. "The only legitimate complaint in my life is that it was three years of wearing the fucking things before someone told me about using talc with leather trousers."

David covers his mouth as he laughs. "Oh dear. And you were wearing them-"

"All the time. And, not for a part," Michael grins, "but because I was a knob."

"You wanted to look cool." David smiles.

"Sweatiest I've ever been," Michael says gleefully. "I did a road trip across Midwest America with a few friends and no bloody talcum powder."

David laughs again, a delighted wheeze. "How old were you?"

"Old enough to know that talc was a thing, young enough to think asking someone how to make wearing trousers easier was embarrassing."

"The amount of leather trousers I’ve wound up in, I should have bought shares."

"You look good in them."

Flattered, and feeling a little awkward, David says thank you.

Michael's eyes flicker down and back up. "Right," he says, and it's slightly loud, like a sudden clap of hands. "It's that time of the night that I'm telling people they look good in leather. I'd best be going." He finishes the dregs of his beer and stands. "I'll see you at breakfast tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yeah, course," says David.

\--

Michael leaves, but the conversation lingers in David’s company. It follows him up to his hotel room as he remembers his own teenage years, that nascent sexual urgency that puberty spat at everyone, throwing spots in your face and handing you unwanted erections on the bus. A growth spurt and your voice cracking. The sudden fascination of girls' skirts and the way the hem swished as they walked, tantalising, inviting. The stupid urge, that you knew was stupid but you did it anyway, to ping bra straps so the girl'd turn and look at you in class, if only to hiss _fuckin'stopet_ at you. The erotic excitement of a page 3 nipple brought in by one of the lads whose folks bought the red tops.

The firecracker release that a few sneaky tugs got.

David's half hard, a lazy warm throb in his trousers. He sits on the edge of the bed, takes his shoes and socks off and stretches out, shoulders cracking as he does. He rubs a lazy hand over his stomach, slithers his palm down so he can rub the heel of his hand against his thickening cock.

Well, if he's going to crack one off, he may as well get comfortable.

He shucks off his jeans and boxers but leaves his t-shirt on. Gets into bed, kicks the covers down and shoves the pillows into a comfortable wedge against the headboard, settles back and takes himself in hand.

His first thoughts as he strokes himself are of women, nameless, incomplete; pert breasts, a sheer bra that you can see nipples through, lacy knickers, the shape of a back, the whisper of fabric as it falls, the curve of an arse. As he firms, becomes harder, he thinks about running his hands over eager thighs, cupping hot skin as the nameless, faceless woman reaches for him - and it's her hand wrapped around his cock now, her hand that strokes him just _like that_ while she smiles down at him, eyes half closed and pleased. A small groan breaks on his lips.

But. A misstroke. There's something about the conversation still echoing around his head, maybe. Or it's the beer - maybe it's the unfamiliar hotel room, or that he's here with his eyes shut, and the hand on him is his own, broad and male - he finds himself thinking of -

\- the time when he was fifteen; he'd gone camping with friends and woken in the night to hear the muffled rustling of a polythene sleeping bag and the wet click of skin in darkness, a low secret _dirty_ sound, small ragged breaths, clandestine and muffled as someone tried to hide their face in a pillow - and stayed perfectly still, frozen in the darkness by uncertainty, frozen and confused as his ears strained to catch every tiny sound, frozen and aroused and still still _still as the dead_ as his erection burned where it touched his thigh, long after anything that was happening had stopped happening -

\- and something tightens in his belly, he thinks of -

\- sitting in a darkened room, hand curled around a friend's cock as they do the same for you, unfamiliar fingers clumsy and keen, hot and sticky, face burning as you stroke awkwardly, riding a high and so _so _desperate for release -

\- the image slips under him, and it's not someone male and unknown, it's Michael. Michael's hands, broad and rough, firm and close. Michael biting his lip as he fists David's cock, Michael leaning close enough that David can feel breath on his cheek. He hears Michael's voice in his mind's ear saying, _you like that_ and he comes, gasping and startled.

David sags into the pillows, reeling from the endorphin high and staring at the ceiling.

\--

The fact is, doing publicity for the work you’ve done - the work you’ve done and enjoyed and want to do well - is like painting your arse blue and putting on a slutty skirt to impress a baboon. It is, however, written in the contract, so out you go, monkey prostitute. Press junkets are a little bubble of unpleasant unreality; a mess of busy boredom, rushing to wait to meet people who don't read their own bloody notes until you’re in front of them, and the repetitive questions that only seem to get more inane as the time passes. It's all so much better with a pal, with someone else to cling to the life raft with as you tread water and wait to go back to your life. David's been - not enjoying it per se, but he's not hated it as much as he knows he can, up until now.

An unnamed uneasiness rattles through him, squirms in his belly and knots his spine. He's been trying to pay attention and respond properly all morning and he thinks he may be getting away with it, until they're leaving one couch and heading to another and Michael touches his arm lightly and quietly asks: "Are you okay?"

"What?"

"You've been- off. I wouldn't mention it but it's kind of noticeable."

"Sorry, slept badly," David lies. Michael’s watching him closely, so he frowns and shakes his head. "Woke up with a headache- I'll snap myself out of it."

Michael keeps his voice low and leans a little closer. "I can ask if we can postpone, or at least make the next one short...?"

"No, no, it's fine." It's not, but David doesn't know how to undo a knot that he's tied in himself. "I'll just be a hissy luvvie and take a couple of paracetamol and a ridiculously long lunch and go somewhere quiet for a lie down."

Michael nods, "If you're sure," and drops the subject. He does, however, get a little bit perkier, a little bit more cheerful and visibly happy as though he’s trying to balance out David's own sullenness, and David just feels worse.

\--

David has an early night, hiding from people. It doesn't help, because the person he really wants to hide from lives inside his own skull.

How do you cut that bit out? Cut out the bit of you that whispers _jump_ when you stand at the edge of a cliff, that says _bet everything on black_ when you were supposed to be going home from the casino half an hour ago, that drags an image that you didn't want into your mind and holds it in front of your eyes and _won't put it down again_?

He paces his room. Sits, picks up the paperback he's brought, stares at the page, watches the text swim, meaningless black lines, and puts it down again. He wishes the hotel had a gym.

David walks around the room again, and thinks, fuck it, he'll go for a walk around the city. Get out, get some air, clear his head. He grabs a jacket and goes.

Forty minutes later, he's a bit lost and trying to make his way back to the hotel. Fucking grid system. Fucking flat city. Twenty minutes after that he's ready to admit that the annoyance is useful, gives him something to focus on, being irritated by his own forgetfulness. Though eventually, sadly, half an hour after that, he finds the right road and the right lobby and gets the right lift up to the right room - and finds that some thoughts are like fish hooks and the only way out is to push them through.

He sighs to himself, big and melodramatic. (What's the point of being an actor if people can't tell what you're feeling? The people in this case are the furniture of an otherwise empty room, but _still_.) Time to pull on the big boy boots and kick the inside of his own head into shape.

So. Deep breath. He has an attraction to men that he didn't know he had. It's not something he expected to find in himself, but there it is.

David stops, and checks himself for -panic? -horror? -a negative reaction. Nothing, not a twitch.

Right. He's never minded about any of that before, but it's different when it's your own self, right? Right.

And, as well as the whole _male_ thing, there's also the _Michael_ thing.

Something in David gives a little wobble.

He's feeling guilty, right? He's feeling guilty because he likes Michael. Michael's a personable bloke, is cocky and mocks himself and smiles at David like he means it and swears like he enjoys it and misbehaves if he’s given half an inch, and it's just unfortunate that David's brain chose to couple a pal with a fantasy. Right? _Right_.

And, maybe, there's that Michael wears his characters close under the skin. Disappears into them. Finds something in himself and lives in that emotion when he works. He'd spent months playing someone desperately in love with the person that David'd spent months pretending to be and now David's reacting to the feeling of that memory, that's all.

That's all.

David exhales.

It’s all fine.

\--

The next day is much easier and David relaxes. Two more days and he's going home.

What can happen in two days?

\--

"Are you going out this evening, or staying in?"

David shrugs. "I've completely failed to get anywhere with my book."

"Well," Michael chews his lip. "There's an improv comedy theatre across town called The Pit that an old friend of mine does some work for. I was going to pop down, check things out. If you fancy it?"

It'd be foolish to say yes. Very, very foolish. But Michael is _smiling_, warm and encouraging and - "Aye, sure," David finds himself saying.

They take a cab to the theatre. Michael's friend Amy is an angular woman, dressed in black with red-framed glasses. She's talking to a pair of young people at the edge of the stage when they arrive and her floating transatlantic accent evaporates by the time she's close enough to greet Michael. "Taff man!" she says, broad Yorkshire.

"Yorkie bar," Michael returns her hug and he introduces David. She apologises, says she can't hang around long but she'll be back later. "Take a table. I'll sort the tab. The beer's muck, but it's cold."

Both of those statements prove to be true.

"Oh, that's dreadful."

"It's not that-" David takes a mouthful, "Ah, no, I take that back. It's _awful_."

"It's somehow both flat and too fizzy."

"Mm," David agrees. "It's like someone wanted to make a drink that tastes like the memory of beer-"

"-if all they had to hand was bathwater."

David points at Michael in agreement and accidentally has another mouthful of beer. It really is awful. Michael laughs at the face he pulls.

"I think I know why Amy felt safe picking up the bill. Though-" Michael's smile is a lovely, cheeky thing and something small and greedy in David wants to touch it, "-she didn't say we couldn't start on the whisky."

"_Oh_. Cun_ning_."

The show is a long-form comedy piece, which could easily fall on its arse but the players know what they're doing and David finds himself laughing a lot. In the darkness, he can feel Michael's eyes glancing to him. On his heated cheeks it feels like being touched. A shiver runs down his neck, light as a caressing finger.

When the lights come up he's had, perhaps, more to drink than he'd ought. His tongue feels a little thick. "They're quite charming - good team."

"Yes, they're really good at putting people together here," Michael rubs his beard. "I've only been along to visit a couple of times but they really do work at that - get everyone doing ridiculous bonding stuff beforehand. Looks absolutely mental but seems to work."

"Makes sense. I've not done any improvised comedy stuff myself - frightens the life out of me -"

"- I'm sure you'd be good -"

David waves that off, "- no, I know people who're good and I'm not that, not at this -"

"- but yeah, I know what you mean -"

"- you need that trust on the stage. But stuff like this isn't just one good pair of hands," David holds his own up to emphasise his point, "you being able to rely on yourself, but for this you'd need everyone to be, well, practically a juggler. Like, having rehearsed enough is one thing -"

"- it's fine when you know what people are going to be doing," Michael agrees.

"- exactly, you've already had a run of them doing precisely the right thing, and you've had time to work out how you ought to be reacting to that, or what to do if you're working with someone who isn't _quite_\- " David makes a wavering hand gesture, "- but I don't think I'm the right person to try something that might be a wrong thing - something off the cuff that could bring everything down with me."

"There's still a bit of a shape to the thing, though." Michael argues. "Stick to the shape and you're home and dry."

"That's easier said than done."

A shrug. "It's a knack. Get your hand in and you should be able to land them fine."

"You've had a hankering for giving this a try, then?"

Michael pauses. "Went to a drag show with a friend when I was fifteen, thought it was wonderful," he says quietly. "The performance, the jokes, the singing - it had that marvellous touch to it, similar to theatre work. The way you hold the audience, you know?" Michael's eyes are a bit distant, like they're focused on a person thirty-five years in the past. "And she was beautiful, that helped." Michael shakes his head and gives a small laugh. "I saw her and thought, yeah, I could do that."

"Drag? Like, the real thing, not the balloons in your jumper, falsetto voice shenanigans?"

"Oh, yes. Bit of dancing, bit of singing - though I can't really sing -"

"I thought all Welsh people could sing," David teases.

"Propaganda," Michael grins back. "But the sway she had over the audience?" He gestures out, to an invisible awestruck room. "It was electric."

"Like when you're on stage and it's all going well."

"_Yes_. The hunger from the audience, the power you've got over them." Michael looks full into David's face then and David can feel a bit of that power, right there. Charisma. Sharp pale eyes and red mouth and personality striking you like a wave.

David takes in a breath to steady himself.

"What you can do with it," Michael says, low, like he's savouring every word. "What they'll let you do with it. I mean, she could have had anyone in that room on their _knees_. And they'd have thanked her."

David's mind is a traitor. "I-" he says, far higher than he means to. "I suppose it's- it's the same. As the stage. Convincing people that things are real."

"And things don't have to be real for very long, just long enough to enjoy them."

_Oh god_. "You've always been very good, at what you do." Fuck, he's babbling. "On, on, the stage."

"I try to be good." Michael's restless hand stops on the table, close to but not touching David's arm. "You're rather something yourself."

"Hey, you two-"

Michael turns, and his smile doesn't waver. David doesn't want to know how he looks himself.

"Amy! I'm really sorry, but I think it's about time we headed back."

"Really? That's a shame."

Michael apologises, makes excuses for the pair of them and promises to return.

David tries to walk out to a cab like a man without an erection.

\--

The journey back is silent.

Neither of them speak, and David can hear every whisper-movement of fabric, every uneven breath drawn.

He can feel his pulse in his throat. He can feel the throb lower, too. He crosses his legs and uncrosses them again, trousers too tight to be comfortable.

He can't look at Michael, he just can't.

It's someone's fault. It has to be.

(There was the moment as they both got into the cab. A brush of too-hot skin, like static electricity trying to earth itself.)

David swallows. A ball of dread and desire knots and unknots itself in his belly.

\--

The lift stops on Michael's floor. He steps out and glances around the empty corridor before looking back at David. "Coming?" he asks with careful indifference, the perfect study of a man who won't be offended to be refused. His eyes glitter.

David touches his lower lip with his tongue and stares at Michael like he's never seen him before. "It feels a bit unreal. The- the past few days."

Michael stares back and says nothing, and the elevator doors start to close. He leans heavily on the hold button to keep them open.

"Nothing has to mean anything," he says, quietly, almost kindly.

David makes a noise like a creaking door when he tries to speak. He swallows, and tries again. "That's- that's easier said-"

The impatient nudge buzzer starts to sound.

"Then I'm going to bed alone," Michael says.

The doors start to close slowly-

-and David steps out of the lift.

\--

The door shuts. It's final, certain and David can feel a fluttery panic building in his belly and - Michael moves close, closer, too close, crowding in, stepping so one leg nudges between David's own and one hand cup-curls on David's waist, and then he's leaning up and David has to move his own face away at the last second so Michael's mouth only meets beard.

"No kissing?"

"Nuh."

Michael pauses, eyes darting back-forth between David's own. Green-hazel, shifting, dangerous. There are mad lines that David needs to draw, but Michael seems to get it. He lays a hand on David's leg, and watches his face. The heat from his palm bleeds through the thin fabric of David's trousers and the bastard draws his hand up, maddening, slow, heavy; it makes David's dick give a little jump in his pants.

A feral grin and Michael leans in close - but instead of whispering like David half expects him to, he bites David's ear lightly, a scrape of teeth that sends a jolt down David's spine and all the hairs on his neck standing, his heart picking up, a rush of flight-fight-fuck. David can't help the little half gasp he gives. He feels the buttons on his shirt being plucked open and he belatedly realises he should be helping, but then Michael's tongue is hot and pointed and traces a line of skin on his throat and David throws his head back and it hits the wall, dully. “Fuck.”

"Mm-hmn."

Michael's hands are hot, running in maddening paths down David's sides, fingernails scratching lightly, skin angry and excited where he's been and fucking desperate where he hasn't yet. He pops David’s trousers open as he strokes, and the keys in one of the pockets make a crash as the fabric hits the floor. Air cool on his bared skin, David grinds down against Michael's leg. It's good, it's great, it's _heat_ and _want_ and it's not anything like enough. He shoves at Michael's clothes, pushes the T-shirt up and finger-fumbles his belt buckle open, thumbing the trouser fly down.

The shirt gets yanked off, and Michael slides to his knees, half-open trousers hanging off his hips.

"It's like riding a bike." David can hear Michael's grin when he speaks. He can feel the heat of Michael's breath against his belly, through where his boxers are damp and clinging to his erection.

David wants to say something snappy back to that, but he's always been shit at being smooth when he's not playing a part.

"My, my." A light touch, a fingertip tracing the edge of his cockhead through the fabric. "The rumours are all true."

"Please-" David's voice is strangled. He stares at the ceiling, inhales and then looks down. Michael on his knees, large eyes looking back up, right into David's face. David has to close his eyes but he can still see: curls damp, clinging to Michael's forehead, the white of his teeth where he bites his reddened lower lip. He looks wild, saturnalian, some sort of filthy promise in his face and, _oh_, David feels wrecked already.

Michael peels his underwear back, slow, slow, inch slow, slides it down into the puddle of cloth at David's feet - and then sucks David's cock in, hard and hot and fucking glorious. Eager and sloppy, hand curling around the base as he strokes and hollows his cheeks and inhales.

David wants to put his hand in Michael's hair, run his fingers over his cheek and feel the work of his jaw from outside as well as in, and he's reaching to do just that but then Michael slides a hand around, cups and squeezes David's arse cheek and one of his fingers _skirts_ the edge of David's arsehole and. _Jesus fuck_. The anticipation shakes the breath out of David's chest. Not that Michael's going to-

But that he might- he might-

That David _wants_ him to-

David comes at that thought, and Michael doesn't relent, the heat-wet-suck of his mouth still hard on David as he trembles and comes and comes and his knees nearly buckle, and he has to tap Michael on the shoulder to say stop, please, stop.

Michael wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and stands up, leaning one arm on the wall and pushing his face close into the hollow of David's throat and smelling him. He strokes himself fast and rough and David shakily slots his own hand over Michael's, all awkward angle and the feeling of damp velvet skin. Michael's breath quickens.

"You can come on me," David whispers.

Michael makes a noise that's like a growl and a sob all at once, that has David's eyes widening and pupils contracting, and covers David's belly in hot come.

There’s a breathless moment before David cracks a smile. "I think I might need a wash before I go back to my room."

"Just a little." Michael agrees. "You know," he says slowly, "I think the shower might be big enough for two."

\--

_"Indulgent, aromatic and cruel, the dish of ortolans is eaten with a towel draped over the head - both to keep in the smells and, perhaps, to hide one’s face from God." _

**Author's Note:**

> [Translation in Russian now available](https://ficbook.net/readfic/8661806), done by the lovely ewige


End file.
